Monthly Archives: oktober 2015

We will travel to New Zealand and Australia on an almost 4 week holiday. The blog might be sporadic during that time. In the meanwhile I can strongly recommend the following great aviation Web Sites to those who haven´t seen them yet: skybrary.aero and boldmethod.com. Check them out and enjoy.

The ICARUS syndrome is based on the myth about Icarus and his father Daedalus who was imprisoned on the island of Crete. Daedalus made two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers to escape. He flew first, but before taking off, he warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea, but to follow his path of flight. However, Icarus did not follow the advice and soared into the sky. He came too close to the sun, and the wax melted. Icarus fell into the sea and drowned. The myth is a lesson learned to stay within the safe limitations of your aircraft. To do this you have to know these limitations, all of them!

This syndrome is similar to the Pioneer Syndrome and hence the Beginner Syndrome. The difference being that it is a totally uncontrolled activity. The person(s) involved has no background, knowledge, aid or training. The first accident in this category might have been the accident of Leonardo Da Vinci´s apprentice, if the story is true. It has been told that he took Leonardo´s flying machine without Leonardo´s knowledge, to a tower. He launched the flying machine by just jumping off the tower and plunged to the ground. He died in this attempt. The lesson learned was that to learn to operate an aircraft by trial and error is a huge risk, especially when you have no clue of what you are doing. The other lesson learned is to never launch an aircraft into the air without proper airspeed. This so that flight is commenced and control is secured when airborne.

We apologize for delays and little activities. The reason is that we have been suffering from the worst flu we ever experienced. We have still not recovered fully, but we are getting there. The Nepal STOL Video is again delayed due to the same reason, but also because we have decided improvements with charts and texts which we hope make the video more interesting. See the new teaser on the front page.

Earlier I have presented the 3 career based syndromes, i.e.: Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced syndromes. However there are other syndromes which need to be highlighted. The first syndrome is the Pioneer Syndrome, which is connected to the Beginners Syndrome. The first known Pioneer Syndrome in aviation history is probably Otto Lilienthal´s tragic accident. He was the pioneer of heavier than air flights, which he did from natural hills and from an artificial hill which he built near Berlin. He made over 2000 glider flights between 1091 and 1896, with a total flying time of 5 hours. See the video on the front page.

His last flight ended with a loss of control and the glider plunged to the ground. The reason this happened could have been a gust combined with limited maneuverability. Lilienthal was severely injured and died 36 hours after the crash. His famous last words was «Sacrifices must be made!». Lilienthal´s contribution to aviation is recognized even today.

Wilbur Wright one of the The Wright brothers claimed that Lilienthal was the most important of the flying pioneers of the 19th century. His accident was the typical pioneer syndrome which occurs because of the experimental nature of being a pioneer, one does not have enough knowledge and the consequence of experimenting with the unknown in aviation was proven to be extremely dangerous. That is a lesson which should have been learned by now. However similar accidents happens even today, when the knowledge of how to perform safe flights is here. I wish we could honor Lilienthal´s gift to aviation by sacrificing his life in the quest of making flight possible for mankind. That is best honored by flying safe.

I always make this point in my safety speeches in aviation classes and seminars, and I urge everyone to learn from others and own mishaps and mistakes by saying that our safety slogan should be: «We are only doing new mistakes». If we could succeed in that, there would hardly be any accidents if any at all, as all the mistakes probably already are done. The mystery is hence why do we keep repeating them?